It wasn’t Thanksgiving that got me, the overflowing table where he wasn’t for the first time – my windshield not cleaned the paper trash not taken to the burn barrel – No. It was a practical three pack of flashlights that did me in, the kind of thing that men of my father’s age buy … More Fleet Farm Translations
At the end of the week we dragged our various brokenness west on highway 29, across the Mississippi river, through the tangled Cities and landed on a Minnesota lake encircled with plenty. Not quite the wilderness but at night you can still see the stars and the light shines in yellow parallellograms on thick green … More How to Carry Your Broken Bones
Sidewalk slabs are replaced out of order one by one, year upon year, a broken football player’s teeth spit into the grass; the cool April sun genuflects and shines through the bright green blades, the shy ruffed hyacinth hiding behind the downspout. I see you there, says the yawning sun. I see your beauty. A … More A Reading from the Book of Sidewalk
But lo here is hot coffee and from the corner Nina Simone croons and there is a snowy slope to the silent white river stopped from its babble by a sliver of flat white sky like a shushing finger against chattering lips – This cabin is already stove through with falling pines or burned to … More The Cup is Already Broken
it’s the ritual of the envelope/ of the return address/ of your address/ of the stamp the card I will send to you is a time traveler, you I hold like a tiny beacon for a moment while outside darkness like a stray cat curls around the house and Sheila wrapped in a parka dispenses … More Decembering
We got an hour back on Sunday, hundreds of years ago, when there was still some modicum of hope. And then the wind came through like a train on Tuesday, pulling all the leaves down with it and heaping it into wet greasy piles along the road while people lined up and marked their ballots. … More Lane Assist
when the rain lessened we hauled our plastic Adirondack chairs in one hand and Old Fashioneds in the other down to the river, down to the dock, and sat there – the dock or the river just beneath the current lifting the water through the slats soaking our shorts from below while the rain continued … More Rain on the River
If you can get past the pictures of men holding fish men in the bathroom mirror men shirtless in bed with their dogs men lifting weights in gyms men with guns men with cheap bottles of beer men with Maga Hats men in their cars men on motorcycles men on barstools men making kissy faces … More The Detritus of Hope and Unopened Scotch
There is a tiny garter snake coiled in a slat on the dock where the flood laid down a tangle of grass; when I pass by it darts up and glides across the boards and falls dramatically, comically, into the reeds. From my paddle board the river is glassine, the setting sun’s reflection a smooth … More While the World Slowly Fragments
Perhaps the news alit for just a second – tiny talons rest on a bough in the lovely dark pines, the branch barely dipping, the chickadee no heavier than your cigar; did you forget it anon, or did the bomb of it drop to the earth leaving its song in the air before you even … More Birds and Strangers
Halfway North 